We’ve always been upfront with our wonderful community that we will take all forms of abuse seriously on Empire Avenue. We review transactions, reports and other metrics on a daily basis to spot trends and issues so that we can react as quickly as we can. Of course, we discuss ideas, listen to community suggestions and make decisions as appropriate.

To this end, we are in the process of reviewing many aspects of the Empire Avenue markets in order to make them as fair for everyone as possible. There are a number of changes that we will likely implement over the next few weeks, similar to how we put in limits on how you could buy virtual shares in new arrivals during our “Dublin” release.

While we do try to release information as early as possible on such changes, we also don’t want to encourage abuse and so some changes will be announced as we make them. Today we are announcing the following change effective immediately

* EDIT: We have changed this rule to be a more fair 50 shares in any 24 hour period in accounts which have not logged into Empire Avenue in the previous 14 days, we will adjust numbers and time periods based on how the markets behave!You will be able to buy a maximum of 10 shares in any single transaction from Influencers who have not logged into Empire Avenue in the preceeding 14 days. This change is being implemented to prevent abuse that has unfortunately occurred with people inappropriately trading inactive accounts. We appreciate the input from our community through the feedback channel and we believe that this change promotes better market strategies.

The integrity of our system and the enjoyment of our users is paramount and we appreciate your feedback and suggestions which help us ensure that the platform is fair and fun for everyone. We are committed to preventing people using the site to promote unethical behaviour or adversely affect other Influencers on Empire Avenue and we will continue to take whatever action is necessary to stop it.

We truly appreciate our community for their input and more changes will follow. Please watch this space!

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19 Comments

This really turns the ship around for EA’s ‘set it and forget it’ selling point for businesses. Makes me worry about EA not being attractive for companies not willing to devote an employee entirely to EA. =s

(e)CASIE (e)WJA (e)COOL are just a small sample of leader board shares that obviously offer good content and are obviously liked by people that are going to be affected by this since they don’t log in to the site at all sometimes for months at a time.

This is all just sad that EA has to cut down on their potential market because of abusers =(

If players are aware of the change I honestly don’t believe logging in every 2 weeks is a lot to ask. It is about interaction. And what happens when the monetization happens? Who wants to advertise with an influencer that cant even be bothered to log in once in 2 weeks?

If API activity is counted as activity, then I see no issue with this. Why encourage users to open up a communication channel that they’re not going to use? As a business, you don’t get to “forget” your communication channels, ever. If you feel that’s an acceptable way to treat your customers, that’s fine, but in terms of the game, there will be a penalty.

Glad to see this, and looking forward to getting rid of some of the abusive buying trends. There are certain portfolios i can look at to see who is going to spike each day. I think that there are 2 camps though. People who organize the activity, and those who follow the high increases. Looking forward to seeing a solution soon. I’ve been really happy with the results in the past.

I like the changes, but have to say that maybe, it should be combined with rules around the leadersboard. The daily change board encourages quick buys of fast growing stocks. If the low activity accounts make it there, it just encourages everyone to buy, my included. I really think that we need to relook at how the leadersboard work, my personal view is that’s where all the problems start.

And I completely agree with Denise about the daily change leaderboard. I’ve invested great amount of time figuring out why all these stocks are rocketing (these past couple of days) and have come to the conclusion that if not a coordinated buy it’s a ‘strategy’ that’s being employed by more and more people everyday.

It consists of a race to buy the daily change leaders that starts right after the market close/open with many people ‘stalking’ the leaderboad and buying max as soon as they possible can, counting on many more people buying these stocks big and then often selling them off a couple of days later.

A clear suggestion for a solution towards this situation escapes me at the moment but I keep thinking about it over and over.

If people were unable to simply dump all of their shares after a quick and dirty profit (organized buys, group buys or leader board stalking) then they will think twice about maxing out like they currently are.